Zygote Fellows

PROOF Fellow

Arfil Pajarillaga is a Filipino American multidisciplinary artist born in American Samoa and currently based in Cleveland, OH. His practice focuses on primarily using analog photography processes to examine the relationship dynamics within environments, using the act of framing as a way to make meaning of the world around him. His work has been published and exhibited throughout Ohio, and has most recently been awarded the 2025 Property Inventory residency at Cleveland Print Room.

PROOF Fellow

Hi! I'm Briana, a Cleveland native and a multidisciplinary artist. I earned my degree in Visual Communication Design from Kent State University, where I explored various artistic techniques and mediums. Since graduating, I've gained experience as a graphic and web designer in the marketing field, creating impactful visuals that tell compelling stories.

PROOF Fellow

Erykah Townsend, also known as E.T., is a conceptual artist based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her art boldly confronts and questions the role of pop culture in our lives. Townsend uses pop culture as a medium to explore the spaces it occupies in our lives and to inquire about the nature of the imaginary.

PROOF Fellow

Jazzee Rozier is a 22-year-old mixed media artist with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in drawing. Rozier spends a lot of their time researching and reiterating philosophical ideas on coping with emotions, relationships, and overall surviving on a daily basis. They take a lot of inspiration from their surroundings and the people they interact with; taking walks, listening to music, and keeping an active sketchbook act as key components to this inside creative process. Considering a familial theme and broad ideas of separation/individualism, tragic optimism, and documentation, Rozier implements printmaking, drawing, sewing, written poetry, and photography as chosen techniques to display this angst. As an artist who spends a lot of time practicing existing within communities and actively showing up for them, Rozier showcases a lot of their artworks within various art galleries, exhibitions, and even curating shows for the involvement of others. One way or another, the drive behind their studio practice is strongly rooted in any means of including the world that keeps moving outside of their own personal experience. Being present matters.

PROOF Fellow

Kalia Horner is a Hmong-American artist based in Northeast Ohio who pulls inspiration

from her multicultural background, creating powerful figurative paintings exploring her cultural heritage as well as sexuality. While also exploring multiple disciplines in her work, she executes touches of printmaking and textile collage throughout her large scaled works. She has exhibited several solo and group shows throughout Northeast Ohio during her undergraduate degree in Painting and Drawing. While also obtaining a BA in Art Education, she teaches art disciplines to K-7 students in public schools, while also continuing her fine arts studies. Using a variety of materials in her work, she culminates strong imagery within her paintings and ties together her personal expression and relationships to identity, family, culture, gender roles and sexuality.

PROOF Fellow

Monique is an abstract visual artist guided by curiosity, intuition, and the shifting relationship between body, spirit, and environment. While acrylic serves as a foundation, her practice often incorporates found and repurposed materials that embrace imperfection, experimentation, and attention to process.

For Monique, creating is a somatic meditation, a tactile form of listening and emotional processing. Her work is deeply informed by the natural world, drawing from its cycles of impermanence and renewal. Through layered textures and evolving forms, they invite viewers into moments of stillness and reflection offering space to reconnect with emotion, embrace uncertainty, and move with the organic rhythms of change.